Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science

Opportunity's Shadow

Somewhere, somebody was wondering if the dark spot in two of Op's descent images was its shadow. Yes it was, as this animated GIF I threw together shows:

http://mars.magnificent.com/places/landings/mer/opportunity/OpportunityShadow.gif


The craft was spinning, so I had to rotate the images, and resize them to a consistent size. Once they're consistent, the second two frames show the shadow moving in the general direction of a small crater...possibly Opportunity's crater. I couldn't find a good candidate for the shadow in the first frame, but it was shifted enough from the other two that the Sun was probably at a much different angle.

Still trying to locate the landing site in the MGS images.

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